Draping the green skerries
Day 16 - September 6, 2023 - Seydisfjordur to Sea (?km / ?mi)
We sleep a full 11 hours. Condensation and flies are waiting for us outside. I make a slow oatmeal and spend some time writing while M takes a literal hike up the hillside, around the south edge of town. I do not feel like myself — still a bit dazed and wobbly on my feet — so I lay low and drink coffee as late as I can, fending off the caffeine headache without spoiling what little constitution I possess. Marissa finds me napping with my feet splayed out of the tent. By the time we pack up, it’s noon.
We check out the giant anti-avalanche gabion wall in-progress and wander the well-done outdoor installation on the future site of the Technical Museum of East Iceland, highlighting dramatic accounts of locals that were affected by the 2020 landslides.
A late lunch for us at Skaftfell Bistro (how could we not come back?) — we overhear the resident chef designing a pre-set dinner in real time with his staff as we eat our burger, fries and lemon sole. We chat with our kind waitress, who tells us about the artist residency program here and who turns out to be the mother of the kid who was showing off on his Spiderman bike with training wheels out front. She lives in Seydisfjordur, is married to the head chef, and has family back in Arizona. Now chummy, we are offered two free dessert experiments from the chef (a pistachio mousse and skyr with warm nectarines) both of which are phenomenal.
To digest, a brief stop at the shipwreck and remaining harbor ships to take our portraits before we head to the Technical Museum for our second pass. We enjoy talking to Halli, who runs the museum now after losing his home. He had been renovating it for 6 years until the landslide took everything. His friends pulled the roof out from atop the mud, and he used insurance money to buy the land outright on the other side, shifting his focus to the Technical Museum’s salvage and rebirth.
We stop by the pharmacy and grocer on the way to the ferry loading area, abuzz with the weekly ritual of sending all these tourists back to Europe. We briefly chat with our waitress from yesterday who’s directing traffic and roll past a guy singing loud in Viking helmet as it starts to rain. We join the many touring motorcycles in their line: one has Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys blasting from one of their speakers; how could Devil’s Dance Floor and I’m Shipping Up to Boston not hype you up for a long sea voyage? Green light and a quick crank up the slick ramp to the very small bike rack, everything nearby reeks of spilled diesel. We lock up and de-bag asap.
Up the many staircases to Room 8118-Fiskiørn (Osprey) to drop off our many bags, check out the upper deck, and plop on the recliners of deck 10 (Laterna Magica) with a drink, streamers of late light draping the green skerries.
Salmon and rice and veggies at Noatuna for dinner, then a deck farewell to the island that hosted us for over two weeks, with high winds picking up as we break out into open ocean. We end the night down in the Undir Cafe, for a couple of whiskey sours and games of 3-up/3-down. While in line for our second drink we meet another American couple, Tristan and Riley, who are from Seattle, and who also bikepacked along our same route from Reykjavik. Great minds! We chat for a few hours and trade stories before heading to bed at midnight as we float forward into a new time zone.
